To Forgive
by Lord Forte
Summary: The choice of her life confronts Valkyr as she stares down the one who hurt her the most.


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[~]

 _I am hurt._

 _There is this pain within me that no words would ever describe._

A helpful alert played as the bulky, gun-metal grey airlock doors shuddered. The two Corpus technicians inside looked to each other, one of them shrugging. No one was scheduled to meet them for a routine maintenance.

They waited, toolboxes in hand with a tired expectation. The airlock doors parted in the middle, sliding into the roof and floor. As the pressure equalized, the lip hissed, and a glint of silver and crimson shone through.

A cylinder built out of eight rotating blades came screeching with a horrid sputter of gas and metal. From one end of the airlock, it swung across them, tearing their suits and flesh away with its ravenous teeth. Stumbling backward, the technicians could only watch as the beast burrowed into a wall. With a terrible wail, it tore itself free in a shower of sparks and metal.

 _I cannot forget it._

 _The hands that reached into me, hot-skinned, but cold with blades. His smile, gleeful at my thrashing; his laughter, ecstatic at finding the secrets that were only mine to have._

The sirens echoed throughout the facility, drowned under the screams of the Corpus within. Mere laboratory workers, they were helpless to the whirling beast hunting them down. With each one it claimed, its snarling sputters ignited with gleeful ferocity.

They fell to the floor in pieces, clinging to life just long enough to see the crimson hand directing its favored pet.

 _He had said that nothing would ever be mine again. No one would come to help, and as more of me vanished into his palms, I believed it. I was nothing but his._

Security arrived at a containment bulkhead, hurrying the civilians through. Yet as the devil came stuttering down the corridor, they turned their guns of light and fired upon it. The innocents between them fell to the metal earth, the fury of gods rending them to dust.

' _Why?' I screamed with a voice that no one could hear. I slipped away, my world a song of drills and his laughter._

 _It came to me slowly, the truth that would make such a man possible._

Rows of Corpus machinery and plasma weapons turned upon the crowds in the evacuation hangar, aiming at the doors. Quiet steps came before they saw it, adorned in blood-splattered orange and black. A suit of exposed sinew and tendons, stamped with shackles they all knew they had made. Their fingers trembled on their triggers, their servant machines waiting for orders.

 _There is a sickness in humanity—a perversion spawned from its very foundations—to ignore that which is difficult, or pure, and to seek the pain and darkness inflicted upon it._

 _A desire to be released from responsibility. To be weak._

 _To be an animal._

The red-skinned devil stared at them with one baleful eye, recessed into the left of its torn-open head. In its clawed hands, the beast sputtered, its teeth ceaselessly swirling, trembling for release.

 _He wanted me. To take the labors I'd sacrificed for without ever understanding why, and steal every beautiful secret that I'd tended to so carefully._

Inclining its head, the devil turned from the guards and civilians without heed to their vast weapons or nervous fingers. Its unblinking eye fixated on an elevator at the far end of the hangar, guarded by a very different kind of Corpus security.

The regular guards did nothing as the devil worked its way into the executive wing, far too busy evacuating the civilians.

 _In the end, all he had left was rage and hate._

 _No …_

 _Those words are too small._

Adorned in silvery black, the executive guard formed uncompromising ranks. For each that fell to the snarling beast another took their place, firing and firing until the teeth would come for them next.

Swallowed in an ocean of plasma, the singular eye glowed, undaunted.

 _Others came after he was done, friends and a mother, giving unto me their support and love._

 _Yet they did not understand._

 _They thought they did, but one-by-one they realized the truth. Each one left, until only the mother's empty smile remained._

 _Hate became my company._

The elevator doors opened to a roofed platform, an executive transport sitting at the far end. One Corpus man, adorned in his fanciful, platinum robes and void-touched cloths, hobbled across it. The four-legged machine next to him whirled its head, a growling scream coming from its disfigured maw.

He slowed to a stop, turning to meet the devil that came for him.

 _But, then, I realized something._

 _I am not my hatred, nor am I my pain._

 _I am me, for however much is gone, I am still here._

His faithful companion, with a loyalty that could only ever be programmed, lunged at his beckoning. It stampeded across the metal floor, thundering with stolen feet in a body that was never its own.

The devil's companion whirled to life, its hunger pure of purpose. With one step forward, it twirled in a beautiful arc, the two sets of teeth colliding together. Gaseous sparks erupted and spilled in a river of plasma, melting the steel floor and arcing through the air in a beautiful dance.

 _I hate him for what he did. He takes to soothe his failure, to justify himself when he is lost. To satisfy that sickness, not to overcome it. His pain came unto me, to make me like him._

 _But …_

 _I hate myself more._

The false beast tore away the devil's companion and cast the weapon off into oblivion. It stalked, assured of victory, and paused mid-step with one foot still in the air, gloating with an emotion it would never understand.

The devil smiled as its own claws came out, and the beast knew its weapon had been holding it back.

 _I hate that I cannot stop thinking about it. To be who I was, to feel everything done again and again._

 _I, one who can shape the Heavens, trapped by one forgettable man._

 _I hate myself for caring so much._

Red, glowing claws, crackling with unrestrained power, swiped and tore through the air. The beast dodged as best it could, frightened by each savage swing. It could find no way to attack, no way to fend off the animal hungering after it.

Piece-by-piece, one little slash after another tore into it, stripping its armor away. Blows that should have killed it didn't, and it wondered why. It wondered why the devil looked so ecstatic.

 _I longed for answers, to have my peace and justice._

 _To have my world back._

 _I pined for it, wishing so dearly to go back._

Glowing fluids hemorrhaged from the beast's sparking circuitry as it stumbled away, trying to keep its systems from failing. The devil stood on the platform and waited, watching. There was nowhere else for its prey to escape.

The beast lunged forward with desperate speed. A single clawed hand slapped it into the ground. The beast bounced off, rolling away like discarded garbage.

The Corpus stood at the end, paralyzed.

 _I stared at him, this tiny man. I remember him above me, smiling. Now, I am the one above him, smiling._

 _I do not want to smile._

 _I am not him._

 _I am not his._

He stumbled back, falling to the ground in an inelegant heap. Pleas of mercy, offers of riches; all the tricks spilled from his lips, but the devil walked to him.

It stopped beside him, staring down with that one broken eye from its torn open head. One clawed hand reached down to the feeble Corpus.

 _There was nowhere to go back to._

 _It happened, no matter how much I wish it didn't._

 _I was the one who kept letting it happen to me, again and again._

 _It does not matter that I am stronger than him, or that he was stronger than me. Even if I had died, I would never be his. I would never be him. Not if I kept to who I am._

 _I hate him and myself._

 _But, I had a choice._

The hand grasped his head, the devil's aura crashing over him. Heat ignited in his veins, seeping into his very body to seek out the wretched soul hiding inside. Fear, rather than pain, tore the screams from his throat.

 _To give into hate, and have the satisfaction of his pain to quench my own. To be like him, weak._

 _Or …_

 _To forgive him._

 _Not in the hope there is a sliver of good. There never will be._

 _Not with sympathy of his plight or suffering. He deserves it._

 _Not to help him. But to help me._

 _To forgive myself._

He blinked, his breath short in his throat as the devil patted his head. Once, twice, and then a third time. His short-cropped hair ruffled under the burning touch, and then the devil walked away. Not to the elevator, but farther onto the landing platform.

 _Here and now, I have the choice to kill or forgive._

 _Justice will have its reckoning, but to take it into my hands … it would not be justice. I am not there, yet._

The swirling hate of the devil warped and twisted, writhing through the air. It lashed at everything it could reach, eating the metal of the floor and the machinery embedded within, the vortex shuddering with every gulp.

 _Another may claim him … but I do not care._

 _Justice will have its reckoning._

 _But, I will be me, first._

Lightning arced along the devil, tracing its scars of sinew and flesh where armor once was. They followed every surgical line, every drill hole, every stud embedded to forever ensure subservience.

Wherever they touched, the wounds faded.

 _I will not be my pain or my hate, though they will remain to heal._

 _I am she who is charged with the Heavens._

 _My secrets remain mine, however stolen they may be. My truths remain true, however tarnished others will treat them._

The metal of forgotten times slipped through tiny holes in reality, falling to the devil that had so long forgotten them. They came upon her, kissing each scar and embracing her, mending the wounds which no one else could care for.

At last, the shackles of the Corpus clanked against the floor, finally rejected.

 _No one will understand why I have done this, but I do, and that is enough._

 _I can never go back, but I can go forward._

 _I will._

 _To undo the pain and the memories. To forge new ones, free from weakness. To be true to myself, to live as I will._

Where red-skinned sinew and tendons once were, golden metal covered them. Pauldrons, plates, armor pads, intricate swirls and beautiful calligraphy alike wrote themselves on the devil. The vortex ebbed from the violent torrent, turning to river streams and babbling brooks with its tender touch.

The golden warrior strode forward with utmost confidence as the Corpus sprawled with a slacked jaw, his eyes as wondrous as a child. The perfection he'd so long sought, standing before him. He cried for her to come back, but the warrior never did.

 _I am no one's except myself, in life or death._

 _I am free._

 _I am Gersemi Prime._

[~]

/End/


End file.
